Intradermal delivery of drugs offers several advantages over conventional delivery methods including oral and injection methods. It delivers a predetermined drug dose to a localized area with a controlled steady rate and uniform distribution, is non-invasive, convenient and painless.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,487,447, commonly assigned and incorporated by reference herein, describes a method and apparatus for sonoporation of biological barriers such as Stratum Corneum (SC), most commonly referred to as the outermost layer of human skin. Sonoporation is the noninvasive transdermal delivery of pharmaceutical drug molecules through the SC and into the cardiovascular system a human body via ultrasound radiation. Significant improvement made to existing sonoporation and sonophoresis methods of transdermal drug delivery may be leveraged to increase market share. Drug encapsulation is a known practice in therapeutic application of the potent but very unstable drugs. Using sonoporation and sonophoresis in the area of delivery of encapsulated drugs would provide many additional pharmaceutical benefits compared to the benefits of a present ways of sonoporetic or sonophoresic drug delivery. Some of these benefits would include delivery of peptide-based drugs that range from bed-wetting to gastric bleeding to cancer and immune disorders such as HIV.